Julia Davis and Lisa Jones are Sydney/Gadigal-based artists who maintain independent practices and collaborate on projects. Since 2009 their collaborative practice has reflected on transience and embodiment of place.
With a shared interest in the relationship between people and the places they inhabit, their most recent project, Thresholds, explores hidden biospheric and subterranean landscapes, iterated through video and drawing.
Their work investigates intangible aspects of place and invites the viewer to reflect upon the fleetingness of our lives, where marks of human endeavour are cast upon a backdrop of geological time. Their investigation into place considers this past with awareness of contemporary viewpoints and practices that acknowledge colonial history.
Previous residencies in Paris and Sydney explored the underlands of these urban spaces and focused on the human endeavour, the vanished and destroyed or non-apparent phenomena of the sites.
Their video installations and drawings are created onsite – where the collaboration, interconnectedness and interdependence of site with the artists is both subject, process and image.
Currently the project has been supported by the Bundanon residence program, GREYSPACE, Sydney Trains, Copyright Agency’s Cultural Fund, The Onslow Storrier National Art School, Cité Internationale des Arts residency program, Historian Gilles Thomas and Society D’Etudes & D’Amenagement Des Anciennes Carrières Des Capucines, Les Catacombes de Paris, Sydney Harbour Trust and the Australian Government through the Australia Council, its arts funding and advisory body.
The artists acknowledge the traditional owners and histories of the various countries on which the works were made. In Sydney, they recognize the Garigal and Gadigal people of the Eora Nation, their enduring connection to land, water and culture, and pay respect to their Elders past, present and emerging.